Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.45, No.9, 3149-3160, 2006
Analytical design of decoupling internal model control (IMC) scheme for two-input-two-output (TITO) processes with time delays
In this paper, a new decoupling control scheme, in terms of an internal model control (IMC) structure, is proposed for two-input-two-output (TITO) processes with time delays. Noteworthy improvement of the decoupling regulation can be achieved for the nominal system output responses, and moreover, either of the system output responses can be quantitatively regulated by virtue of the analytical relationship between the adjustable parameters of the decoupling controller matrix and the nominal system transfer matrix. The ideally optimal controller matrix is analytically derived by proposing the practically desired diagonal system transfer matrix, in terms of the robust H-2 optimal performance objective. Because of the difficulty of physical implementation, its practical form is carefully configured according to whether there exist any complex right-half-plane (RHP) zeros in the process transfer matrix determinant. At the same time, tuning constraints for the proposed decoupling controller matrix to hold the control system robust stability are analyzed in the presence of the process additive and multiplicative uncertainties, and, accordingly, the on-line tuning rule is provided to cope with the process unmodeled dynamics in practice. Finally, illustrative simulation examples are included to demonstrate the remarkable superiority of the proposed method.